Review of Daniel Chua, US-Singapore Relations, 1965-1975: Strategic Non-Alignment in the Cold War

• Main Author: NGOEI, Wen-Qing (WEI Wenqing)
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
• Subjects: Singapore; United States; Non-Alignment; Cold War; International and Area Studies; Political Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3214; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4471/viewcontent/Daniel_Chua.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The history of U.S.-Southeast Asian relations during the Cold War is dominated by studies of American involvement in Vietnam. If understandable, this state of affairs is nevertheless regrettable. For, even though U.S. cold warriors viewed the fates of Southeast Asia’s states as interconnected and pursued a containment strategy focused on the entire region, scholars of U.S. foreign relations with Southeast Asia pay outsized attention to Vietnam. There remain disappointingly few major works on U.S.-Indonesian relations despite years of American interference in Indonesia due to its huge population, the one-time prominence of its Beijing-oriented communist party, and firm American support for the Suharto dictatorship.Even the United States’ alliances with Thailand and the Philippines remain woefully under-studied.Kenton Clymer’s 2015 book on the American relationship with Myanmar was the first major work on the subject since 1976.